For some people, a 3-ish-hour runtime is an automatic mark against a movie — especially if they’re sitting in a theater with no chance to press “pause” for a bathroom break. For other people, an especially long runtime might help justify the time and money required for a movie theater excursion in the first place. And as CNN explains, it is the massive franchise spectacles and superhero films — the types of movies that do well at the box office — that seem to be trending longer these days.
That said, lengthy flicks are nothing new. On Rotten Tomatoes’ list of best movies that run 3 hours or longer, 33 of the top 50 were released before the year 2000. The first-place finisher, Akira Kurosawa’s 207-minute epic “Seven Samurai,” premiered in 1954. Other classic epics that made the list include “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), “Spartacus” (1960), “Ben-Hur” (1959), and “Gone With the Wind” (1939).
Kurosawa is far from the only internationally acclaimed director known for lengthy cuts. In third place is Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 period drama “Fanny and Alexander,” which clocks in at 188 minutes (and a 512-minute version aired as a miniseries in Sweden). Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lean all have two films apiece in the top 50.
The climaxes of a couple beloved movie franchises garnered enough critical praise to rank high as well — namely, 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” and 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” And it wouldn’t be much of a list of long movies if “Titanic” wasn’t on it somewhere: The 1997 pop culture phenomenon came in 35th place.
See if your favorite flick made the top 50 below, and check out Rotten Tomatoes’ full 100 here.
- “Seven Samurai” (1954) // 100 percent
- “O.J.: Made in America” (2016) // 100 percent
- “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) // 100 percent
- “Schindler’s List” (1993) // 98 percent
- “The Leopard” (1963) // 98 percent
- “Children of Paradise” (1945) // 98 percent
- “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) // 96 percent
- “An Elephant Sitting Still” (2018) // 96 percent
- “The Right Stuff” (1983) // 96 percent
- “The Last of the Unjust” (2013) // 96 percent
- “The Irishman” (2019) // 95 percent
- “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” (2001) // 95 percent
- “Short Cuts” (1993) // 95 percent
- “Hamlet” (1996) // 95 percent
- “Andrei Rublev” (1966) // 95 percent
- “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) // 94 percent
- “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) // 94 percent
- “The Best of Youth” (2002) // 94 percent
- “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) // 93 percent
- “Apocalypse Now Redux” (1979) // 93 percent
- “Carlos” (2010) // 93 percent
- “Spartacus” (1960) // 93 percent
- “Norte, The End of History” (2013) // 93 percent
- “Kwaidan” (1964) // 91 percent
- “Eureka” (2000) // 91 percent
- “Gone With the Wind” (1939) // 90 percent
- “Reds” (1981) // 90 percent
- “Blue Is the Warmest Color” (2013) // 89 percent
- “The Deer Hunter” (1978) // 89 percent
- “The Last Emperor” (1987) // 89 percent
- “Malcolm X” (1992) // 89 percent
- “Barry Lyndon” (1975) // 88 percent
- “Giant” (1956) // 88 percent
- “Napoleon” (1927) // 88 percent
- “Titanic” (1997) // 87 percent
- “Winter Sleep” (2014) // 87 percent
- “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) // 87 percent
- “Mysteries of Lisbon” (2010) // 86 percent
- “The Ten Commandments” (1956) // 86 percent
- “JFK” (1991) // 85 percent
- “Gandhi” (1982) // 85 percent
- “Ben-Hur” (1959) // 85 percent
- “King Kong” (2005) // 84 percent
- “Grindhouse” (2007) // 84 percent
- “Doctor Zhivago” (1965) // 84 percent
- “Magnolia” (1999) // 83 percent
- “Dances With Wolves” (1990) // 83 percent
- “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) // 83 percent
- “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013) // 79 percent
- “The Green Mile” (1999) // 79 percent
Discussion about this post